Update

I looked at the blog a few weeks ago and realized I have not done a posting in months.  So an update is in order.  An Excellence Agenda has not been abandoned!  The good news is that I have been working extensively with the Excellence Agenda tools with clients and the response has been extraordinary.  In four projects over the last nine months, the Excellence Agenda framework has been the key to moving the client to a new level of maturity in organizational transformation. The framework worked for a national NGO, two regional governments and Missionary organization.

Given this positive experience and field testing, I have written an Executive Overview of An Excellence Agenda that is being published by The IdeaWorks Publishing as a Kindle e-book.  The official launch will be announced over the next few week.  So stay tuned for more information and announcements.

The Principles of An Excellence Agenda

Earlier this week I was working with a client on their Excellence Agenda.  As we talked about the concepts and clarified what it was and how it worked, the motivation and excitement took off.  Coming out of the meeting I realized I needed to find a better way to tell the Excellence Agenda story.  Yesterday, while walking the dogs (walking has a great impact on creativity) I had an "aha" moment and was able to simplify An Excellence Agenda to a series of basic principles.  So here they are:

1. Excellence isn't everything, it's the only thing.
2. Job 1 of every executive and manager is "to create environments in which excellence can happen"
3. Excellence is a journey, not a destination
4. Excellence = meeting requirements
5. Excellence does not equal perfect: Excellence is an outcome, Perfect is a target (generally unachievable)
6. There is a proven process for building an Excellence Agenda, that has definable steps and that engages the participants to build buy-in and execution commitment. 

I am looking forward to elaborating on these topics over the next week or so...

In the meantime check out the link about my Granddaughter: lifewithlol

Speaking Engagement

Next week I am speaking at the Social Media in Government Conference.  I am tag teaming with David Paul, Director of Economic Development, City of Brockville.  Here's the link:  Social Media in Government.  I will do a post on the conference next week.  Hope to see you there.

Update

It has been a while since I posted some significant content.  So an update is in order.  I have been so busy with new initiatives that I have neglected the blog.  But that is about to change, I have a number of posts waiting to be finalized and posted.  So some updates.

In December of 2011, I was invited to join Delta Partners Management Consultants in Ottawa, Canada. It has been a huge move.  Delta Partners brings a trusted adviser approach to their work and they have an amazing content repository focused on organizational design, leadership and change management.  You can see their material at www.deltapartners.ca.  One of my first assignments with Delta Partners was to attend the Food Manufacturing and Safety Forum in Dallas Texas at the end of January.  Preparing for that and the follow up from that conference has been quite exciting.  Lots of very interesting things happening in that area.  I have also had a number of proposals and other projects to work on.

Friday of last week I, along with a number of colleagues from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, was given a Certificate of Merit for contributions to the development of the Agency program area performance measurement system.  The project was initiated by Bart Bilmer five years ago to provide the food programs with a consistent approach to performance measurement and integrated program reporting.  The goal was to move programs from a compliance mindset to a performance measurement culture. My role was to work with all of the programs to define their performance measurement logic models, key performance indicators and develop the integrated reporting system. The system was ultimately connected and linked into the Agency corporate performance measurement system that reports to the Parliament of Canada.  Over that time the Treasury Board Secretariat moved the rating on the Agency performance measurement system from "Needs Attention" to "Strong", the highest level of achievement.  The Certificate of Merit was a nice way to express appreciation for the contribution of everyone on the team.

Check out http://www.aliconferences.com/conf/social_media_govt_canada0312/index.htm.  I will be supporting the presentation from the City of Brockville on using social media in a municipal context.

Stay tuned.  There is more to come over the coming weeks.

Caring

An Excellence Agenda starts with caring.  In this blog post, Seth Godin hits it on the head on the impact of caring.  This is the line that really struck me:

Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.


An Excellence Advantage is about an investment in comittment and effort, not about capital expenditure.  Check the link here:

  Seth Godin: Caring

Busy Month

It has been a busy couple of weeks and I have not put up a post in a while.  In early December the hard drive on my laptop completely died.  I could not get it going in any way.  My laptop is a Compaq Presario made by HP.  I called the HP help line and the experience was definitely an Excellence Agenda moment. Their response was incredible. They had a new hard drive to me within a week and provided full installation and reformatting support.  I will have more on that in another post.  The upshot is that I have been reloading all my software and other technical support programs that make life in today's society work.  

One of the biggest losses was an Executive Guide to An Excellence Agenda and a Workbook that I had drafted.  I am in the process of reconstructing and hope to have as a New Year's gift within the next week.

At the same time was Christmas, a busy time for everyone.  Our holidays were very busy and enjoyable.  It has been a warm winter so far and we were able to complete a whole host of family get togethers. 

I will also be making an announcement about a new consulting affiliation early in the New Year.  All in all 2011 has been a year of transition.  I am looking forward to a major push on An Excellence Agenda in 2012.

Merry Christmas (belated) and have a wonderful and prosperous New Year.

Tom Peters on Excellence

No discussion of Excellence can ignore the profound influence of Tom Peters.  In Search of Excellence, A Passion for Excellence and Thriving on Chaos are fascinating, detailed examinations of what works.  In chapter 1 of A Passion for Excellence, Tom Peters describes the four principles he believes are at the core of Excellence. They are:

• Care of Customers
• Constant Innovation
• People 
• Leadership through Managing by Wandering Around.

His key theme is that Excellence is simple, not easy, but simple. The paradox is that you have to do all of these things with a single minded dedication to doing well.  This quote struck home with me again as I reread it:

"I turns out that neither superior customer service nor constant innovation - the two sustaining edges of excellence - is built upon genius in the executive suite, sleight-of-hand techniques or mystical strategic moves on a game board that allow one to gain a five or ten year advantage over one's competitors.  Both are built, instead, on a bedrock of listening, trust and respect for the dignity and creative potential of each person in the organization."  (Page 579, Tom Peters Two Complete Books, Wings Books, (c) 1995)

As Tom Peters so eloquently points out, Excellence is about people, creating communities of excellence through listening, respect and giving people the space to be innovative and creative.  I don't think the world has changed all that much.  I think we have forgotten the basics of Excellence. We have to get back to the fact that business is about people; looking after our customers, our suppliers, our team.  Leadership is about listening, trusting and building respect.  Imagine that. Leading by listening - really listening, not just to the words, but to the meaning, and the intention of the conversation.  The problem I see in organizations every day is that everyone is so busy talking, (through emails, text messages, and meetings) that no one has the time to listen. 

The New Key Success Factors to Create An Excellence Advantage

When I attended business school, several generations ago, one of the key teachings was the ability to identify the key success factors (KSFs) of a business.  By understanding the key success factors and focussing attention on them you could, the theory went, make the business more successful.  In those days the key success factors were such things as low cost of production, proprietary technology or knowledge, distribution or pricing.  If your business or organization could master the key success factors you could dominate your industry.

We live in a different time now.  In an era of instant access to knowledge through the Internet, Google and Social Networks; information and knowledge is ubiquitous.  A competitor can have the same information and can learn as fast as we can.  In an age where finance is global, the ability to move manufacturing to lower cost markets has significantly reduced North American production capacity.  The competitive advantages of old no longer work.

I believe there are five new Key Success Factors.  I believe by mastering these five KSFs each of us as individuals and in communities of excellence can succeed in a new manner. What makes them different, is that they are personal KSFs that anybody can adopt and be successful.  More importantly, these can be scaled to the organizational level as well.  An Excellence Advantage is built with these five New KSFs in mind.

The five are:

1. Creativity,
2. The Experience,
3. Relationships,
4. Personal Leadership, and
5. Sustainability.

Creativity:  Creativity, and it's half brother Innovation are critical to success in today's economic environment.  With ubiquitous information, it is the ability to manipulate, interpret, analyse and reuse in creative and innovative ways that contribute to an excellence advantage.  Don't compete - create!  Find new ways of interacting with clients, customers and stakeholders.  Creativity is the ability to see something in your imagination and bring it to reality.  Creativity is an extraordinary and wonderful gift, and as human beings we all have it. 

The Experience:  We now live in the Experience Economy.  Our clients and customers no longer want to buy goods and services, they want to be involved in an experience that enriches them. So often we do not examine the experience we are giving.  Experience is more than just customer service, it is all the design elements and details in how we interact, interface and communicate.  In the experience economy we create opportunities for conversations. The Experience is the product. Entrepreneurs and organizations that truly understand this are unique and generate raving fans and tribes of supporters. 

Relationships: If Experience is the product, then Relationship is the distribution system. This KSF is built on the ability to create unique one on one, one to many relationships.  The Internet, social media and other technologies gives us the ability to have incredible one on one conversations with a multitude of people.  Building relationships builds the trust we need to have to conclude a transaction.  

Personal Leadership:  Seth Godin, in his book Tribes, tells us of the world's need for all of us to be leaders.  To move from a management role to a leadership position.  The tribe can be small, or it can be large, but we need to take personal care to lead in areas of our passion.  Personal leadership means taking responsibility for what goes on in our lives and with those around us.  Anyone can be a leader.  You don't have to be the boss to be the leader, in fact in most cases the boss is not the leader in many organizations. One of the greatest books on leadership was written around 540 AD by St. Benedict, called The Rule. Reading the Rule of St Benedict opens one up to the real meaning of listening, being responsible, being reasonable and also being humble.  Personal leadership demands humility. 

Sustainability:  The last KSF is sustainability.  The world needs each of us to find ways to lower our ecological footprint while maintaining our financial, emotional and spiritual sustainability.  Sustainability is not just a good thing to do for the environment, it is a great way to do business and reflects your personal leadership commitment. 

At the core of An Excellence Agenda are Communities of Excellence, practising the New KSFs to develop and create an Excellence Advantage.  In future posts we'll link all the elements together into a management framework.

Excellence Agenda Interview

This past Monday morning I had a call from a colleague, David Cohen  inviting me to guest on a one hour teleclass scheduled for Wednesday evening.  It seems his planned guest had been in a bicycle accident and was unavailable and he needed a replacement in a hurry!  David really liked the Excellence Agenda concept and thought it would be great for the class.  This teleclass is offered by Alterna Credit Union  as a way of reaching out to their small business and entrepreneur clients.  The class offers an opportunity to connect with peers, get some one on one coaching on a topic that can help their business.  So Wednesday night we did the one hour teleclass.

It was really great.  Firstly, David, is a great host.  He makes his guests, me included, feel comfortable and his questions let you explore ideas and get into a conversation.  Alterna makes it easy for their clients to connect using a toll free teleconferencing system.  The participants asked great questions and we really got into the discussion. I was sorry to see the hour come to an end. One of the great lessons that I got from the discussion is that An Excellence Agenda works for all sizes of businesses, from one person self employed entrepreneurs, to mature organizations.  It was wonderful to hear people take the concept and run with it. 

Congratulations to both Alterna and David for making this happen.  Check out David's site for his weekly radio show Small Business, Big Ideas.  I will be interviewed on the show in January on the Excellence Agenda concept and will post the link here.  Check out Alterna for their unique focus on building and promoting small business and entrepreneurship. 

The Artistic Director

Deep in my past I was a classically trained musician. I played oboe, the instrument that Samuel Pepys called, " an ill wind that nobody blows good". I played in both orchestras and chamber ensembles. I much preferred chamber music because each player is one to a part, yet you are part of a whole. I moved on into arts management and worked with symphony orchestras and ballet training school.

One of the unique aspects of arts organizations is that they are structured differently from other businesses.  They have an artistic director. The role of the artistic director is to cultivate the Excellence Agenda for the company. They are intimately involved with both the Vision/Change Agenda and the Mission/Sustaining Agenda of the organization. The Artistic Director is, in fact, the Champion of the Excellence Agenda. The company is only as good at its ability to perform to the level of the Excellence Agenda. Every performance is unique, some are better than others, all of them may be excellent!

The role of management, in this structure, is to create the environment in which the Excellence Agenda can be deployed.

There is a similar structure in film production. The Director is the keeper of the vision or whole concept of what the film will be.  The actors and the production team work to support that vision.

In sharing the concept of the Excellence Agenda with colleagues, it has occurred to me that we need to look at our organization with an Artistic Director lens. Who in your organization is the keeper of the Vision and the Mission? How well is that Vision/Mission articulated or shared? How well understood is it by the rest of the production team? Look around this week and identify the Champion of the Excellence Agenda in your organization. If you can't find one, maybe you have a gap that needs addressing.